Wang Wanxing

Wang Wanxing (, born 10 October 1949 ) is a prominent Chinese pro-democracy activist who was a prisoner of conscience for 13 years in Chinese detention centres and psychiatric institutions called Ankang.

In 1968, the communist authorities sent him to a collective farm in Heilongjiang, a province next to the Russian border.

Activism Whilst in the collective farm, he wrote a personal letter to Mao urging him to reinstate the then disgraced Deng Xiaoping. He was arrested in the middle of the night and spent the next month in jail.

In 1976, with mass popular demonstrations taking place in Tiananmen Square following the death of Zhou Enlai, Wang wrote to premier Hua Guofeng again in an attempt to seek the rehabilitation of Deng. He was branded a "reactionary" and jailed for 17 months. In February 1979, after Deng had returned to power, Wang was allowed to go back to Beijing, where he took a job in a vegetable warehouse.

Wang was again arrested on 4 June 1992 when he, acting alone, unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square on the third anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. He was swiftly arrested and locked up in a psychiatric hospital near Beijing, with a concocted diagnosis of "political monomania".

In August 1999, he was discharged under pressure from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for a three-month trial period, subject to him having no contact with the media. On 18 November 1999, Wang asked the authorities if he could hold a press conference to discuss his confinement. Wang was forcibly removed from his home by eight public security officers and returned to Ankang psychiatric hospital in Beijing on 23 November 1999.

Release and exile 16 August 2005, the authorities released him and unexpectedly deported him to Germany.

Following his release, in 2006, Wang was examined for two days by Dr. Raes and Dr. van der Meer, who said in a statement: "He was not suffering from any mental disorder that could justify his admission."

Personal life With his wife, Wang Junying, and daughter, Wang lives in Germany as a refugee.